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The
Mersey begins in Stockport and stretches for 20 or so miles through South
Manchester before entering the Manchester Ship Canal in Flixton.

The river, one of the largest
in the area, has acted as a barrier and boundary for hundreds of years.
The name 'Mersey' is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for 'boundary'.
The names 'Moss' 'Ees' and 'Carrs', which are associated with the river
reflect its wetlands and periodic flooding.

Over time the towns grew
into cities and the increased population put pressure on the valley. Areas
of poor agricultural land were set aside for rubbish tips and sewage works.
Gravel was extracted for the building of the M63 in the sixties.

In the seventies the river
banks were raised and flood storage basins were built. This reduced the
problem of flooding. Reclamation schemes turned tips into agricultural
land. Sewage works became nature reserves and gravel pits became water
parks.

In 1978 the Mersey Valley
Countryside Warden Service was created to manage the valley for people
and wildlife.

Nearly 1000 acres of land
is thus managed by the bouroughs of Manchester, Trafford and Stockport.
This land provides a haven for wildlife and facilities such as horse riding,
cycling, orienteering, fishing, birdwatching and picnicing for the local
people.

The Dry Weir,
Hawthorn Lane

The Bridgewater Canal Company
was greatly concerned about flood damage to the Barfoot Bridge aqueduct.
To help reduce the problem they built a stone weir upstream, which allowed
floodwater to run along a channel, by-passing the bridge.

Geograph.org link ( The Geograph Britain and Ireland project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland, and you can be part of it).

You can still see a plaque
built into the weir bearing the insription: 'This weir was begun on
the 16th April 1841 and was completed on the 24th day of September 1841.
William Cubbitt FRS Engineer John Tompkinson Contractor who undertook
to execute it on the falilure of the previous work, which was swept away
by the flood of the River Mersey on the 17th August 1840'.

The weir was last used
in 1915.

The Watch House

The Watch House Cruising
Club building, situated on the Bridgewater Canal at Hawthorn Rd, used
to be the residence of the foreman responsible for canal bank maintenance.
One of his most important jobs was to 'watch' Barfoot Bridge when the
Mersey was in flood.

If the bridge was in danger,
it could be isolated and the canal waters shut off by placing across the
canal massive timber baulks in groves. Barfoot is still standing despite
a hundred years of river floods.

Sale Ees Flood
Basin

For centuries the river
Mersey has flooded the areas of Sale, Northenden and Didsbury after high
rainfall. As development and increased population took over more land
on the river's edges, the old flood banks and measures such as widening
the river channel were less and less successful.

Nowadays the problem has
been taken care of by new flood storage basins at Didsbury and Sale operated
by the Water Authority.

When the water level is
too high, sluice gates near Jackson's Boat pub are opened up. This allow
surplus water to flood open land at Sale Water Park. When the water levels
fall, the flood water will drain back to the river downstream of the Bridgewater
Canal.

Jacksons Boat
(formerly the 'Bridge Inn' or 'Greyhound')

The river Mersey is the
traditional boundary between Cheshire and Lancashire. Because of natural
changes in the course of the river Mersey centuries ago, Jacksons Boat
is in the odd situation of being in old Lancashire (within the boundary
of Manchester city) but on the Cheshire (i.e. south) side of the river.

The inn was built at the
end of the eighteenth century, replacing and old wood and planter house.
Illegal cock fights used to take place in the surrounding fields. The
pub is said to have had associations with the Manchester Jacobites. It
is said that men like Colonel Townley of the Manchester regiment and the
famous Dr John Byrom used to meet there regularly with other royalists
to drink the health of the King.

The pub was named after
a local farmer named Jackson who cultivated land in the area and who regularly
ferried people across the river by boat, charging them a small fee. In
1814 the land came up for sale as 'Jackson's of the Boat' or the 'Boat
House'. In 1816 a footbridge was built and a halfpenny toll charged to
cross it on foot or one penny with a bicycle. This bridge was washed away
in a storm and was rebuilt in 1881 as an iron girder bridge, still charging
a toll to cross the river. In the 1940s Manchester Corporation bought
the bridge and the toll was abolished by the end of the decade.